Thoughts on TV, Advertising, Worship...
“…Besides extensively depriving our culture of exposition, television’s nature also intensifies the appeal to emotions. Its images distort watchers’ ability to reason and justify choices. Earlier advertisements laid out facts so that buyers could make decisions on the basis of qualities in what was being sold, but by the turn of the century ‘advertising became one part depth psychology, one part aesthetic theory,’ and reason had to move elsewhere. Thus television ushered in a major revision in methods. Indeed, an ad:
‘is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for picnic in the country—these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.’
Church leaders must see how dangerous such a method is, lest we be tempted to let worship also be ‘market driven.’ We permit that to happen when we study what the consumers/worship participants fancy more than we study what is right with God! Then worship, too, becomes pseudo-therapy and not the healing revelation of God.”
~Marva Dawn & Neil Postman
‘is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for picnic in the country—these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.’
Church leaders must see how dangerous such a method is, lest we be tempted to let worship also be ‘market driven.’ We permit that to happen when we study what the consumers/worship participants fancy more than we study what is right with God! Then worship, too, becomes pseudo-therapy and not the healing revelation of God.”
~Marva Dawn & Neil Postman
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